Turning a Bad Health Care Plan Into a Total Wreck

I stole the title of this post from Kevin Drum who posted today [not today; I forgot to publish this on the day of Drum’s post] about theEssential Health Benefits (EHB) that the Republican health plan (ill-health plan would be a more apt term) would have taken away. Here is what he says about EHBs:

Essential Health Benefits. These are things which every health care plan is required to cover, and Obamacare spells out ten of them:

Doctor visits

Emergency room visits

Hospital visits

Prescription drugs

Pediatric care

Lab services

Preventive care

Maternity care

Mental health care

Rehabilitation services

The Republican health care bill is still having trouble getting enough votes to pass, so Paul Ryan is thinking about placating conservatives by repealing all of these EHBs. This means that a health insurer could literally sell you a policy that didn’t cover doctor visits, hospital visits, ER visits, your children’s health care, or prescription drugs—and still be perfectly legal.

What it means to me is that conservatives and Republicans do not want you to have any health care at all if you can’t afford it on your own. You can just die or go into bankruptcy. Who cares? You got cancer because you’re a bad person.

Harry Truman

Check out Kevin’s blog. He is posting a storm about the farce that the Republicans are trying to foist upon us all. Hopefully, they will fail miserably [they did!!!], thus preserving the status quo that is far, far better than anything the Republicans have been able to come up with even though they’ve had at least eight years. More like 70 years if you go back to Harry Truman’s attempt to implement health care that was, of course, foiled by the Republicans.